Highlights from Bitrue x Energy Web “Ask Me Anything” Session on Twitter Spaces | by Bitrue | Jun, 2023

Q1. Please take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience.

Definitely. So hi everybody, thank you so much for coming. My name is Jesse. I’m the CEO of Energy Web. We are a global organization that works on open-source software for the energy transition that we’ll talk more about. But briefly, I’m an energy and climate guy and a tech guy. Second, I’ve been working on electrification, renewable energy, and energy efficiency for my entire career. And then, back in 2017, I was lucky enough to be introduced to a lot of different digital technologies, including blockchain and decentralized technology, and saw that those technologies could really create a lot of value for some of these big energy companies that I’d been working with for my whole career, and made the decision to get energy web off the ground and see what we could do.

That’s a little bit about me, and I’ve been lucky over the past few years to learn more about the technology side of that equation because my background is in energy.

Q2. Can you please give us a brief introduction and overview on what Energy Web is about and your goals?

Energy Web is focused on one thing: accelerating the decarbonization of the global economy. To put it another way, we help some of the world’s biggest energy companies build digital solutions that decarbonize different sectors of the economy. For example, with Shell, one of our partners, we’ve worked with them to help them create a digital solution to make it really easy to track and trace something called sustainable aviation fuel. Sustainable aviation fuel is the fuel that goes into planes that have far less carbon in it than normal fuel. They use technology to help different airlines trust where that fuel comes from.

On the other side, in terms of just this whole topic of accelerating decarbonization, we help really large electric utilities form digital relationships with assets like electric vehicles because if you can tell an electric vehicle at very precise time intervals when to charge and when not to charge, you can actually use things like electric vehicles to balance the grid instead of a big fossil fuel-powered plant. In summary, and we’ll talk more about both those solutions I just described, we help provide digital solutions to perform some of these functions that big energy companies cannot perform right now because they don’t have the tools to do that. So that’s kind of our DNA. We just work with these really large energy companies to give them tools that will help them decarbonize faster.

Q3. Can you explain a little bit about the team behind the projects, and are there prominent Energy Web partners that support the project?

Definitely. On the team side, we’re a diverse mix of people from 18 different time zones because we’re doing work in many different countries around the world, and we’re kind of a mix. Half of us are energy sector experts who really understand the energy transition and climate and how to talk that language to some of these enterprise partners. The other side of the team is just technology and engineering experts that have expertise in certainly decentralized technology, we’re talking about blockchain or decentralized identifiers and self-sovereign identity. But then also Web2 experience. A lot of the components of these solutions do include cloud solutions, databases, and traditional identity and access management solutions. So really, the team is a mashup of energy experts and then also technology experts.

Regarding partnerships in our DNA, we would be nowhere if we didn’t have enterprises using this software. So, yes, Shell is a great example. Some other big brands that folks might be familiar with, we work very closely with Volkswagen on everything having to do with electric vehicles and green electric vehicle charging and things like that. We work with some of the world’s biggest electric utilities. I’m based in California, and the California ISO is the biggest utility in California. They’re one of our partners.

If you check out our website or any of our socials, you can really see great highlights of all the different projects and solutions we rolled out with these companies all around the world. If we spin over to Singapore, Singapore Power Group has been one of our longtime customers. PTT in Thailand is another major oil and gas and energy player. So again, the list kind of goes on, but definitely check out our website. Generally speaking, we work with some of the world’s largest energy companies on all of these different topics.

Q4. What problems are Energy Web trying to solve? And what has the project done to achieve it?

There are really two discrete challenges that we’re relentlessly focused on solving. The first one is about the grid. It’s about electricity. I mentioned it briefly, but here’s a simple way to think about it. Right now, the way we balance the electric grid is to have humans sometimes sitting in front of computers, basically turning up and down large centralized power plants. And most of those power plants are powered by natural gas or coal. Sometimes you have big hydroelectric facilities, things like dams. But generally speaking, the way we balance the grid is everybody comes home or goes to their business, they turn the lights on, they turn pumps on, they turn motors on, and in response to that, grid operators have to crank up or down these large centralized power stations.

The really interesting thing is that we have some new assets coming online that are far more efficient and cheap and lower carbon at performing those same functions. The problem is they’re distributed. These assets include rooftop solar systems, batteries, the inverters connected to those batteries, electric vehicles, and electric vehicle charging stations.

And the opportunity is, if we can network together all of those different millions and eventually tens and hundreds of millions of assets and have them be used to balance the grid, that’s a far more efficient solution than having these large centralized power plants performing that same function. And that’s what we do. So that’s the first problem we’re focused on trying to solve. We allow electric utilities to digitally interact with all those different assets to perform that function.

The second one is a little bit simpler to explain, and it’s really about all these emerging green product supply chains. Whether we’re talking about sustainable aviation fuel that I described, whether we’re talking about carbon offsets, or whether we’ve even done some work on green bitcoin, these are new emerging product classes and are pretty complicated. What we do is we use Web3 technologies to make it really easy to trace and trust those complex green product supply chains. That’s the second challenge that we’re focused on solving is just bringing dramatic levels of transparency and trust to these new green product supply chains.

Q5. What are the energy web solutions and products?

We’ve got some flashier names for those products that we’ve put out there. For the electric utility side, we call our solution a Data Exchange Solution and a Digital Spine Solution. These are similar words to describe the same thing. So our primary solutions here are around data exchange and something we call a digital spine for the grid. We just put out a full open-source toolkit on that, and that’s really focused on that grid problem.

And then on the other side for these green products, a very simple solution is called Green Proofs, enabling market participants to create proofs about these green products.

Q6. Now let’s talk about the token $EWT. What are the utilities and what do the tokenomics look like? Are there any prominent use cases in the future that the community should know about?

Definitely. As a starting point, the Energy Web chain is a blockchain that most of these applications are using. On the Energy Web chain, an Ethereum clone with a different consensus mechanism, some fees need to be paid to use that blockchain, just like on Ethereum, gas fees and other transaction fees to use that blockchain, which is the Energy Web chain.

However, what’s currently being rolled out is the ability for anyone in the world to purchase Energy Web tokens, stake them, and use those tokens to support something called Worker Node Networks. I’ll spend a moment on this because it’s really important for understanding the fundamental token economic design of the Energy Web. For the solutions that we just talked about, whether it’s the Digital Spine piece or the Green Proof piece, we’re creating an environment where these different networks of nodes can perform useful work for these energy companies.

I’ll take a specific example for some Green Proof use cases. Energy market participants need to know that electricity comes from a certain place. For example, if you’re a big corporate purchasing renewables, you want proof that those renewables come from specific wind, solar or hydro facilities. And what these worker node networks enable is, instead of that corporate looking at a proprietary database and trusting some third party to say don’t worry, your renewables are coming from this specific wind or solar facility, what these worker node networks do is perform matching between that corporate’s electricity consumption and these different wind and solar facilities.

Basically, you’ve got a decentralized network of nodes all running a similar piece of computational work, in this case, matching energy consumption with generation from renewable energy facilities. And those nodes publish that work, and you can trust it because many different nodes perform that work. If you want to run one of those nodes, you’ve got to buy Energy Web tokens and stake them to be trusted, and then rewards are paid out to those node operators via Energy Web tokens. That’s the fundamental concept of these worker node networks that we’re deploying now that’s in partnership with. We just announced some work with Polkadot.

But, if I step back and just talk about EWT, there are really two ways to think about it. Today, Energy Web tokens pay these transaction fees on the Energy Web chain for anybody working in the Energy Web ecosystem. And what’s coming and will be deployed this year is this worker node concept, which means that individuals can take these tokens and stake them against these individual nodes. Those nodes are performing useful work for these different energy companies, and that’s tied to the solutions I described.

Q7. I recently saw a partnership announcement between Energy Web and Polkadot. Can you tell us more about the partnership and what you are trying to achieve?

Yeah, it ties directly to what I described in these worker nodes. And by the way, there’s some really simple documentation explaining this worker node concept. We’ll make sure we put it out on our Twitter and put it back out there for the community to see. Still, in summary, this concept of having these different individual networks of nodes that are performing work for energy companies, we can’t do that right now with the legacy Energy Web chain. What we’re trying to do with Polkadot is we’re going to go after a parachain slot on the Polkadot blockchain. And what that parachain slot will do is enable all of these different worker node networks to be launched very easily.

That whole setup with Polkadot is going to use the same token. So we’re not creating a second token or anything. Everything we’re doing here with Polkadot and going after this parachain on the Polkadot blockchain is based around the Energy Web token. And the way to think about it is we’ll have the Energy Web chain continuing to run, and our enterprise partners will still use it, and that’s where these tokens will be tracked. But then, on this new blockchain called Energy Web X, that’s where all of this action on the worker nodes is going to take place, and we’re staking against these worker node networks will take place. So we’re really excited to bring this new blockchain to market. And maybe the simplest way to think about it for this audience is two blockchains, one token.

Q8. We’ve also seen an exciting announcement about Green Proofs for Bitcoin, one of your solutions. Can you tell us more about that?

So Energy Web sits at this funny nexus between the energy transition sustainability and crypto. And obviously, the flashing red signal about those two things that a lot of press and conversation surrounds is the Bitcoin blockchain’s energy consumption and carbon footprint. Bitcoin uses proof of work consensus. It uses a ton of electricity. And because our electricity system is not running fully on renewables, Bitcoin has a big carbon footprint. So over the years, we had several conversations with both sides, Bitcoin miners and then on the other side institutional investors who are interested in taking positions in Bitcoin but are nervous about the carbon footprint. And so we ended up launching this initiative called Green Proofs for Bitcoin. And what it does is we’ve developed a standard that Bitcoin miners can apply to.

That standard says where are your mining rigs located, how much renewable electricity they use, and how much Bitcoin you are expected to produce or have produced over time. And based on that information, they apply and get a certification. It says that they have gotten this certification and that more information about that certification can be found on our website. On the other side, we’re creating an environment where financial organizations can construct financial derivatives of those certifications. So you might see some financial organizations that want to construct investment products that make it possible for institutional investors to come in and only get exposure to Bitcoin that was produced by miners that have gotten that certification. So that’s what we’re trying to do with Green Proofs for Bitcoin. Everything I just described is also built on the Energy Web stack. It uses the Energy Web token. That’s just a little about the initiative, and there’s much more information online. We’ve certified five initial miners, and everyone keeps an eye out on this space in the next couple of quarters as we’re deep in conversation with several financial organizations about how they can use it.

Q9. We’re curious to hear more about Energy Web Chain’s roadmap for 2023. Can you share any updates on the project’s advancement and the team’s resolution to accomplish its goals? And what milestones can we expect to see achieved?

I’d think about our roadmap in two different tracks. There’s a Web3 component, and then there’s an enterprise component to our roadmap. So on the web three component, our primary focus here is Energy Web X. So bringing to life this new blockchain, the Energy Web X blockchain, makes it possible for individuals to stake energy web tokens against these different worker node networks via what we’re calling the Energy Web marketplace. Those are the two primary deliverables we’re focused on. On the Web3 side of the equation is getting that blockchain up and running and making it possible for this entire worker node network concept to fly. We fully expect to get both of those things up and running before the end of the year. And we’re moving on to the specifics of the Energy Web chain parachain slot and crowd loan. That’s the primary focus on the Web3 side.

On the enterprise side, our primary focus is launching some of these additional Green Proof registries, which we expect to do before the end of the year. And in addition to that, we’re actually building a full as-a-service (aaS) tool for enterprises. So we’re creating an environment where energy companies no longer have to work with Energy Web. We’re creating an environment where an energy company can log into a website, construct one of these applications that I’ve described on this call, launch it, and pay for that solution to be run in the wild, including payment for all these awards for these worker node networks, et cetera. So on the enterprise side, we’re making an Energy Web as a service product that will be out there in the wild so that these companies can more quickly launch these solutions instead of us or other partners in the energy web ecosystem having to hold their hands along the way. So, there is a lot to do this year, but those are the primary things we’re focused on.